The question of how, with whom, and to what end the Church makes decisions is not a secondary one; it gets to the core of the Gospel (not the only thing that does this, of course; but still it is an essential). Bp. Wrightâ??s vehemence is understandable, whether well or poorly expressed: he feels as if those with whom he has shared faith and ministry â?? â??my companion, my own familiar friend, with whom we took sweet counselâ?? (Ps. 55:14f.) â?? are now working to undermine the very vows of pastoral oversight to which he was asked to subject himself, and within which he has labored. He is a bishop for the whole church, after all. Something we have tried hard, with little effect, to tell TEC bishops. But that is part of his point: you canâ??t have it both ways, calling people to the accountability of the whole church, and then throwing that wholeness out when it doesnâ??t suit you.
â??Congregationalismâ?? does indeed bother many of us and deeply. There are, after all, real reasons why many of us are not â??free churchâ?? evangelicals; it is a conscious choice, in fact, since most free-church evangelicals are a lot better at hosting bible studies, mission outreach, church growth, and the rest than are evangelical Anglicans, and if those were our priorities before all else, we would certainly be in the wrong place. â??Communion orderâ??, however, is something we believe is biblical, Christ-called, and therefore a primary imperative. It is not something way down the totem pole on the list of â??nice things to do if you have the timeâ??. The call to communion â?? and the disciplines involved, which include the ordering of the Church life in common counsel, honesty, and mutual accountability, rather than simply declaring independence when things get rough â?? springs from the reality of the Body of Christ, and hence it is bound up with the essential doctrines of the Son of God. It is in this light that Paul writes what he does in Philippians 2:1-18, where â??being of the same mind, having the same love, and being in full accord and of one mindâ?? are images of the God who became the servant of those who are weak, disobedient, and dying, that we might exalt him as our Lord, and ourselves, in following His way and being transformed in His Spirit, may act as â??lightsâ?? in a perverse world. The forces pressing Anglicans into congregationalism are ones pressing Anglicans into a contradiction of the Apostleâ??s desire and command, and into a drifting away from Christ Jesus himself. So I believe, at any rate.
It continues to astonish me that so many conservative Anglicans think that their witness is so weak and so unsupported by Godâ??s promises that continued, ordered, and loving efforts at discerning and embodying â??one-mindednessâ?? in Christ with those who are in error, are leading people to hell. I suppose there is no guarantee that such engagement will not do damage; but there is just as good (better to my mind) reason to believe that the whole-scale throwing over of our common commitments to an ordered life in Communion is producing scandals that are ruining the faith of Christâ??s â??little onesâ??. I know of no conservative congregation that has scandalized the faithful by preaching, teaching, and witnessing faithfully, even within the Episcopal Church, or even more certainly, within the Church of England. There are good reasons people might give to leave TEC at this time, to be sure; but they tend either to be based on a firm conviction that Anglicanism itself (and not just TEC) is a failed ecclesial experiment, or on the personal and particular levels at which conflict can be tolerated. I do not consider â??Scriptural faithfulnessâ??, which Wright properly sees to be a wax nose in these kinds of polemics, to be such a reason, since in its substantive sense such faithfulness can be upheld even in the lionâ??s den.
Ephraim Radner – comment to Bishop Tom Wright’s ‘A Confused Covenant’ Titus 1.9
